SPARK JOURNAL #27: BECKY MURDOCH
 |
| Welcome to THE SPARK! A biweekly interview series to help the artists and patrons in our nationwide community connect with and learn from each other. Becky Murdoch | Event Producer | Creative Coach | Editor Hi, Becky! So, to start with, tell us a bit about who you are and what you do, and how you first got involved with Epiphany Space. Hi. I’m Becky and I’m the Director of Events at Epiphany Space though that title might be changing a bit in the near future. I love gathering people and creating an environment for creatives to thrive. I actually got involved with Epiphany Space when Cortney and I were housemates. How it started is hazy to me. Cortney and I hosted a joint event for Epiphany Space and another organization that I volunteered with and then I just started hanging out more and more at Epiphany Space. I was broke and Melissa welcomed me in, I think I started doing events to earn my keep. In 2017 an opportunity opened up for me to join the staff, so I quit my job and the rest is history. Tell us about your time working in the music industry. What kinds of things did you do, and what was it like? Any juicy stories or cool anecdotes? Oh my goodness, we’re going back a long way for this one. I’ve loved music (some might say, obsessively) since I was a kid and I always wanted to work in music. Working at my college radio station led me to intern at a couple of different record labels in Nashville. I worked for a few different small indie labels (trust me, you’ve never heard of them) and was a jane-of-all-trades. Being that I mostly worked in small offices I helped with A&R by listening to tons of crappy demos and passing along the good ones. I worked in marketing & PR by reaching out to the press and constantly updating press kits. I also worked in radio, developing campaigns for singles and vying for airtime at radio stations all over the country. I still love radio to this day, that was probably my favorite. What was it like? It was the best way to spend my 20s. I got to go see bands all the time. Nashville was a really small big city. Does that make sense? It had all the amenities of a city but it was still small-town. I could decide to go see a band and go downtown alone (I always felt super safe) and end up meeting up with five other friends that decided to do the same thing. My life was really all about music when I was there. My favorite story is of course my interview for my second internship (that turned into my first industry job). How this internship came about was really odd and probably too long to get into here. I will say that my fellow intern and I had to flee our first internship and ended up interviewing together at Absolute Records. Who flees an internship and who joint interviews for a job? We are greeted by the current receptionist/jane-of-all-trades and are escorted to the President’s office. We sit and wait and as we are waiting, I notice all the gold and platinum albums hanging on the walls. Now, this is pre-Google, I didn’t even have a computer at my apartment so I couldn’t just figure out who this guy was (when you are fleeing an internship you don’t have a lot of research time). I get up and look and all the albums were Prince albums. Now, I love Prince but I don’t know who this guy is. After the interview, I go home and call my cousin who is a Prince aficionado and I mention his name and she freaks out and then her husband freaks out and I find out that I had interviewed with Prince’s original guitarist. Wow. Rock & Roll royalty. I love that I got to work for someone that worked closely with one of my all-time favorite artists! |
  |
| You recently started a record club called Liner Notes. Tell us a bit about that. What made you want to do that? What are some of the things you hope participants get out of it? Liner Notes is kind of my journey back into music. When I stopped working in music, I kind of stopped listening to a lot of music. It’s an idea that has been rattling around in my head for a while now, years really. I didn’t know what I wanted it to be and finally decided that it was a record club. The idea is to listen to an album in its entirety, we are working through the Rolling Stone Top 100 Albums of All Time list, and discuss it. So, kind of like a book club but with records. I love actual album liner notes; love to see who artists thank and the creative design that goes into it. I especially love when lyrics are included. Honestly, the reason for starting it is mostly selfish. I wanted to start listening to more music and also listen to bands I don’t normally gravitate to. I hate to do things alone so gathering people just made sense. I hope that participants will gain a deeper appreciation for artists that they don’t typically listen to and also make new friends in the process. In addition to your work at Epiphany Space, you also work for the Hollywood Partnership. What do you do there? Is it difficult balancing your workload there with your workload at Epiphany? I do work for the Hollywood Partnership which is basically a business owners association for a specific area of Hollywood. We help with clean, safe & hospitality as well as business development. Most of my job is scheduling and running meetings. It’s a good gig and I have great colleagues. Since I went full-time back in January, it has been harder to manage my workload there with my workload at ES. My workday at The HP is very defined but when I’m done, I’m tired. When I get to ES, I’m coming in as everyone that coworks is winding down for the day and I want to be social, which I normally give into. I’m super extroverted. I typically get to my ES work after everyone leaves and I normally work on Saturdays. I make it sound like all I do is work, don’t worry though, I have plenty of time to play and rest! |
 |
| I hear you also edit a bi-weekly interview series called The Spark. Is that anything worth mentioning? (In all seriousness, though, how did the idea for The Spark first come about, and what made you want to do it?) The Spark? I’ve never heard of it! Aren’t we funny?! How did the idea for The Spark come up? I don’t remember, I do remember pitching it to Melissa and working on it at the 2022 Writing Retreat in Georgia. I liked the idea of an arts journal and thought that interviews would be a good way to start. We’ve been doing this for a year now and it’s been pretty fun. I would love to expand it and am working on a few ideas! Stay tuned! What other projects have you got in the works right now? I think that with two jobs, expanding The Spark and launching Liner Notes I should say that’s enough but of course, there are other things. Cortney and I are working on our next Agnsty 80’s Sing-A-Long fundraiser and I’m working on the logistics of launching Epiphany Space – Detroit later this year. I have a couple of other ideas floating around but I typically have to ponder things for a while before they happen. Some of that is my procrastination and some is timing. I think Detroit will open up some unique opportunities. What’s your dream project? With unlimited resources, what would you love to do/create? Well, I was working on my dream project earlier this year but someone beat me to it, in a big way. I could have kept going with my version but it kind of took the wind out of my sails. I think right now, I want to do something in a mall. I know, that’s really vague but last year at the Dickens Festival I was thinking how fun it would be to have an 80’s or 90’s event like that where you are immersed in the time period. I think a mall would be a perfect setting for that event. I was such a mall rat when I was a teenager. As malls are evolving, I think this could be a fun use of the space and might drive business as well. Maybe that’s my creative side merging with the business development world. I would also love to have a space where my friends could come to Detroit and do their shows. I’m sure with all our talent, we could keep a space booked all year! And finally, what advice would you give to artists and others pursuing their creative passions? It’s rough but it’s worth it. Since leaving my job in 2017, I’ve been happier and more fulfilled even though I was making less money. That might sound a little odd since I currently have a full-time job. That’s just what was needed for this season. I think for me it was not thinking of my life/career in a linear fashion. I guess my advice would be just do what feels right to you and don’t worry about what others think. If you need the stability of a day job and want to create on the side, awesome. If you never want to work in an office again, fantastic. Everyone is different. Be open to the ebb and flow of life. |
 |
| Guest Edited by Rice Omary Instagram: @ricelolilop Steve Alloway – Interviewer Extraordinaire Steve is a writer, performer, and occasional time traveler, born and raised in L.A. When he’s not hanging out with awesome Epiphany Space people, he can usually be found doing shows with his theatre group, Spirit Onstage, or baking delicious desserts. Twitter @ingrediments Instagram @IrresponsibleTimeTraveler Becky Murdoch – Editor Becky loves gathering people and creating opportunities for artists of all kinds to showcase their work. Most of the time, she can be found in Hollywood where she is currently Director of Events & Editor of The Spark for Epiphany Space. When she’s not at Epiphany Space she loves going to movies and listening to live music. Instagram: @murdoch_becky (where you can see the account she set up to spy on interns & promises to start using soon…ish…) Email: becky@epiphanyspace.com |
| Epiphany Space is an artist community with hubs in Los Angeles and Columbus, Georgia. For a complete list of our events (professional development, social gatherings and coworking), visit the Events page of our website! SAVE 20% ON EPIPHANY EVENTS AND COWORKING with a Community Membership (click here to get your first month free) |